Jeroboam | Wayfarer

What if church pictorial directories showed us as we really are?

At that time Abijah son of Jeroboam became ill, and Jeroboam said to his wife, “Go, disguise yourself, so you won’t be recognized as the wife of Jeroboam. Then go to Shiloh. Ahijah the prophet is there—the one who told me I would be king over this people.”
1 Kings 14:1-2a (NIV)

Yesterday I had the privilege to give the Sunday message at Westview church in Waukee. I shared a tongue-in-cheek illustration about church pictorial directories. Every church I’ve ever attended has done a pictorial directory. A company comes in with their portrait cameras and families sign up to come to the church to have their professional portrait done. The company puts together a directory of the families for the church and makes money off of the photos packages that they sell.

My illustration was simply that when we go to have our family portraits done, we put on our nice clothes, get cleaned up for the camera, and try our very best to look the part of a picture perfect family. We want to appear to be who we think God and the church want us to be. I think it’s very similar to what many of us church-goers do every Sunday morning. We want to appear, not as we really are, but as who we suspect others want us to be. What would that portrait look like, however, if the camera captured us as we really are?

Jeroboam’s wife did her best to pretend to be someone she was not when she went to Ahijah the prophet. But, God and the prophet saw through her charade, as I believe God does with all of us whenever we try to pull the same trick.

This morning I’m thinking about living authentically and being honest about who I am. Life is messy, humans are imperfect creatures, and the further I get in life’s journey the more I discover the depths of my own depravity and my need of grace and forgiveness from both God and others. Hiding and pretending does nothing for my spiritual progression, and, in fact, only hinders and delays the process. Only when I am honest and authentic with myself, God, and others, can I deal honestly with my blind spots make progress on this spiritual pilgrimage.

At the same time the word of God came to Shemaiah, a holy man, “Tell this to Rehoboam son of Solomon, king of Judah, along with all the Israelites in Judah and Benjamin, This is God’s word: Don’t march out; don’t fight against your brothers the Israelites. Go back home, every last one of you; I’m in charge here.” And they did it; they did what God said and went home. 2 Chronicles 11:2-4 (MSG)

Anger. Pain. Loss. Those are the ingredients for rash decisions and tragic reactions.

When Jeroboam rebelled and took half the kingdom with him, Rehoboam’s first instinct was to march to war and take back what he felt was rightly his. The carnage would have been unbelievable. We saw it in our own country’s civil war.

I’ve seen this same reactive “take back what’s mine” anger in many different situations:

Siblings fighting over toys when they are young, inheritance when they are older
People stalking boyfriends/girlfriends who’ve ended the relationship
Parents grasping after rebellious children
Spouses punishing their mates when they feel their spouse has taken advantage of them

I’ve always been struck by the story of the prodigal son. The father in the story didn’t run after his son and demand that he come home. It didn’t mean the father didn’t care or didn’t desperately want his prodigal to return. The father simply knew that reacting in anger and making his son return by force would never work. So, he chose to respond to his son’s hurtful, selfish decisions by staying home, sitting on the porch, waiting, keeping an eye on the road and praying.

We can’t control what others do. We can only control how we respond.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and kacleaveland